In the Shadow of Blackbirds(55)

“Do you promise not to come any closer? Look me in the eye.”

He did as I asked, and a small spark of the old Stephen inhabited his brown irises again. I could still see the handsome boy I loved inside that changed, haunted person.

“Will you stay right there?” I asked.

He nodded.

“You promise?”

He nodded again.

“Talk to me, Stephen, so we can make sense of the ugly things and send them away.” I swallowed. “Tell me about France.”

He dropped his gaze, and his photographs behind him shook with an unnerving tap, tap, tap, tap, tap against the wall.

“Last night at the séance you asked me to stop you from going either there or to your house,” I said. “What parts of the war do you experience?”

“I’m not talking about France.”

I lowered myself to a kneeling position. “I need you to tell me what happened so I can help you get some rest. What do you see?”

The picture frames trembled harder.

“Tell me, Stephen.”

“Trenches flooded with rainwater. Mud. Filth. Gas masks.” He sat upright and pulled his knees to his chest. “Blood-soaked bodies hanging on barbed wire. Artillery shells whistling and screaming overhead. Rats the size of cats crawling over me. Flashes of light that bring out the huge, dark birds.”

My flesh went cold. “Tell me more about the birds.”

“I don’t know where they come from.” He buried his face against his knees. “But they’re like no creature I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell how many there are. They show up, and I expect them to peck out my eyes, but they just keep watching me and killing me, and they never go away.”

“How are they killing you?”

His body shook as if something cold had surrounded him. “It’s dark and shadowy. I’m struggling too much to see them through the smoke and flashing lights. My wrists are tied to something. They stick the tube of a copper funnel down my throat and gag me.”

“Were you tortured over there? Did the Germans capture you?”

“I don’t know.”

I inhaled a gust of fiery air. “The air burns whenever you’re with me. What do you smell when you’re with these birds?”

“Fire, yes. And those goddamned flashes of light explode over and over and over and over.”

His lightning photograph whacked against the floor, saved from shattering by the braided rug.

I heard a movement in Aunt Eva’s bedroom down the hall—a squeak of her mattress. I held my breath, counted to twenty, and turned my attention back to Stephen. My voice dropped to scarcely above a whisper. “What do you see when you’re in your bedroom?”

He lifted his face, his eyes dim and weary. “A bloodstained sky.”

“In your bedroom?”

“Yes. And the closed door and windows that won’t let me out.”

“You feel trapped in your bedroom, then?”

“Yes.”

“Is your brother ever there?”

“No, just the birdmen, when it’s dark.”

“Birdmen? They’re part man?”

“I don’t know. It’s dark. They’ve got hands and beaks.”

“You see them in your room? Not just on the battlefield?”

“I don’t know if it’s my room or not. It’s hot from all that light …” He brought his hand to his left temple.

“Are you all right, Stephen?”

He winced. “It hurts my head.”

“What does?”

Mr. Muse’s frame banged hard enough to make a dent in the wall.

“Oh, God.” He opened his eyes. “I want to shoot them.”

“Please stop that knocking sound. Aunt Eva will hear you.”

“You’ve got to keep them from getting at your eyes.”

“There aren’t any birds here, Stephen. Listen—your brother gave me some of your books, and I can feel the warmth you experienced when you read them. I wonder if going inside your house and touching anything left over from your time in France—”

“No! Stay away from that house.”

“I can’t go to France, but I can get into your bedroom.”

“No. Don’t go anywhere near there. If they’re there, they’ll take your beautiful eyes.”

“How am I supposed to help you, then?” I raised my voice. “Tell me. What am I supposed to do?”

I heard Aunt Eva running across the floor of her room. I turned toward my door and heard the second frame clatter to the ground. By the time I leapt over to the pictures to hang them back on the wall, Stephen was gone.

Aunt Eva walked in just as I placed the lightning bolt image back on its nail. I saw the expression on her face when she caught my fingers wrapped around his photograph—the slump of her shoulders, the sudden downturn of her mouth. The previous glow of awe in her eyes when I’d mentioned communicating with the spirit world had now dimmed to deep concern.

She didn’t say a word about Stephen. She told me to go back to bed and left my room.

The compass’s needle followed me again. The smoke and frustration in the air lifted. I tucked myself beneath my blankets, but I couldn’t sleep until the early hours of the morning, when the crickets stopped chirping and the first strains of light glowed through the lace of my curtains. I could only lie there and think of a white, bloodstained sky and Stephen’s insistence that he was being watched and murdered by those hideous dark birds.